Yrae Chronicles

Nimay in the Big Book of Stuff! Which I've never shown off before because it's always just been a Word doc with headers and stuff, but with the advent of leaky roof soaking into every goddamn page, I decided that rather than just reprint it, I'll design it, too! Because design is fun! So now it's got negative space, updated referance arts, pictures all through, aesthetic boards, different fonts for the headers and highlights, and by golly gee whiz I enjoyed doing this. There's also a bunch of unfinished arts because why not? When else am I going to look at them? I'd forgotten most of those pieces existed.

No bleed, which is weird for me, but my paper is only A4 and I don't really want work doing this for me 8D

I've been thinking a lot about writing lately without actually doing any of it, so allow me a ramble to maybe get myself back into maybe writing some real story this weekend.

Way back when I started with Silent Harmony I remember doing those character surveys and always got stumped by the question of 'Which animal do you associate with him/her?' I always thought that was a silly thing. I've never associated real people with animals before, why would I do that with my characters? Just make them real people. And so I did. Later on, probably five or six years ago, I read some article about associating characters with animals and how it can bring more life to how you write them. Not by constantly likening them to the animal (She was like a cat, aloof and independent, only willing to let you give her attention when she decreed it, that kind of thing) but just by using verbs that you'd normally use to describe the animal. Why say 'she reminded him of a cat' when you can say she prowls, she hisses, she yowls, she purrs, she curls up?

It's something I'll certainly want to do in the rewrite, make the associations that I've slowly started realising with the top four and applying them more consciously. The more recent additions--Shizaaqa and Assili especially--have their animals set. Nimay, Yamin and Nol are a little trickier.

Shizaaqa is lithe and slender. Her eyes are piercing and her voice hypnotising. I use words with the letter 's' in them a lot when describing her, and not just because she's Kazinian. She's dangerous, poisonous. She rears up in anger and settles sinuously back in her throne. She doesn't walk; she glides, she snakes, she sways. Just these descriptors sprinkled here and there, not so obvious that I'm screaming SHE'S A SNAKE but enough to get the imagery going.

Assili, despite trying ever so hard to be her mother, is not a snake. Assili's gauze flutters, her hands flit, she tries to hide it but she hops in excitement. She darts and tilts her head to the side when she's listening. But most of Assili's character comes in her voice, I think. It's a tittering sing-song speckled with twitters and chirps and tweets. It's an ear-piercing screech or a squawk; never a cry or a yell. Lot of onomatopoeia in the language surrounding Assili, short, staccato words. She hops, she struts, she preens, she flies. She also loves birds and birdsong, and Shizaaqa's private nickname for her was Golden-capped Honeyeater, but those are pretty explicit and not really what I'm on about here. I'm talking about the language you use to talk about them.

Flannel Flower's fingers curl and dance like a spider's legs. She's silent, she creeps, she watches, she strikes. She's also completely batshit insane so I'm not sure how much of the arachnid feel comes across with her.

Yan? Yan's the wind. Yan is death. Yes, he has the giant bat wings, but a flitty little bat with a high-pitched squeak he is not. His voice is dry and sandy and dead. He's cold, he avoids human contact, he's just profoundly uncomfortable to be nearby but those who don't know him can't quite put their finger on why. He swishes, he glides, he picks and needles. May not be an animal, but all Yan's language comes from the wind and death. Cos. He dead.

Nimay is unsurprisingly evolving into a bird of prey. Quite unlike Assili's little songbird, she's predatory, she circles, she's always watching, waiting. She glides, she arches her neck, she strikes, she digs her claws in. She doesn't run, she flies, but I do have to be careful with that one given that she literally can fly and the imagery might go the wrong way there.

Yamin I'm not sure on. Something will come up. She's always been the hardest to pin down.

Nol I haven't actually written into things yet, but I'm thinking horse maybe? Still doesn't quite fit. Bolting, cantering, galloping; huffing and... whinnying and screaming not so much. Nol doesn't whinny. Also never thought of him as graceful nor applied the word 'majestic' to him, despite royalty. Maybe not horse, then. Eh, like 'Min, we'll see what evolves.

Lynnlita, once she makes her appearance, will most certainly be a cat.

And that's the lot, for the moment. Now let's see about doing some actual writing :D

MY GIRLS! ♥ I've had these references saved for YEARS. This stock image girl is perfect for them both and has expressions suited to both and alsdghjaslk This is what the last 143 portraits have been building up to. MY GIRLS ♥♥

( Character 144: General Nimay )

Title~ Song Meme ~ Nimay
Author~ Annarti
Disclaimer~ All mine, except War who appears a coupla times. He's drazzi's :D
Notes~ Song meme! Pick a character, stick your playlist on random, then write a snip for the next ten songs that play. Only allowed to write for the duration of the song, tho. Once the song finishes, you stop :D
I... cheated a bit. I skipped a couple of schizophrenic songs (you can't write to end-credits songs, I've realised. They encompass every feeling in a movie into 6 minutes of song. Doesn't work so well for writing a character in said 6 minutes) and also Like a Virgin from the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack. Cos it really doesn't get much more ooc than that for Nimay. I swear I didn't rig what ones actually did come up, tho. I have a lot of soundtracks on my playlist.
Comments in italics, cos some really need them >>

( 1039 words in ten parts )

Title~ Schizophrenia, Yay!
Author~ Annarti
Disclaimer~ Still mine
Notes~ 25 Moods Challenge =D So it's not technically one story, just a whole bunch of little snippets all focused on Nol. I was going to do Shizaaqa and use it as a characterising excercise, but then I got stuck on 'happy', which is number one of the list. Oops.

Anyway. I did change a couple of the moods for my own reasons: Pleased was too much like happy, so I turned that into guilty, much more fun >) Hollow/blank... Nol doesn't do hollow/blank. The only time he's ever been blank in his life was when Naraan died, which was obviously what I'd already done for bereft. I was at uni with the full intention of using my four hours there to plough through the list of moods, wrote bereft, got depressed, and spent the rest of the time looking at GW screenies instead. The next one on the list was flirty, and I couldn't write that after just killing Naraan >< So I turned hollow/blank into bored instead. It's sorta related to hollow/blank >> Sorta kinda not really ^^;

Angry and enraged were HARD, because again, Nol doesn't DO angry. Irritated, fine, plenty of things irritate him: peasants, foreign royalty, heatwaves, being overcharged, Kazinian wilderness, blade archers. None of it makes him properly angry tho, so those were bloody tricky. When it happens tho? Damn~ he can be scary o.o;

*shuts up and posts the damn thing*

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Title~ Danger
Author~ Annarti
Disclaimer~ Still mine
Notes~ Genesis 121. Oh~~ you have NO idea how much FUN this is >DDDDD

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Title~ Half Desert
Author~ Annarti
Disclaimer~ Still mine
Notes~ Genesis 095. Could be an introduction to desert magic, I guess... I dunno XD;

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Title~ Clean Up
Author~ Annarti
Disclaimer~ Still mine
Notes~ ENGL 2503 Exercise 2, Point of View. "Write a first-person narrative in which the 'I' indirectly describes a second character by describing that second character's room or house, front garden or back yard, or car interior." Yes, that's pretty much what I did for the first CREA 1021 assignment, just change it to first person, chop out Nol's presence to cut the word count to 400. However~ I had fun with that last time =D So I decided to do a whole new one instead. Why not? =3 I'll admit I did nick some stuff from the original, but what're they to know?

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Title~ Espionnage
Author~ Annarti
Disclaimer~ Still mine
Notes~ kawa~ 72. Finally found out what the tropics mission was all about =D 'may's and Nol's second mission, here's the briefing =3

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Title~ Magic against Steel
Author~ Annarti
Disclaimer~ Still mine
Notes~ kawa~ 74. This has been in my head for the better part of a week, finally got it down now =3 My left pinkie hurts now, thank you Rumal.

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